Forty Under 40

Chris DiSantis, 38

President & COO,
Hawk Corporation

You know the story: a kid from a working-class neighborhood is found to be a genius and ultimately rises above his environment to do great things. That's Mr. DiSantis — though he didn't wait quite as long as Will did to have his talents discovered. Mr. DiSantis' dad knew his son had brains all along, and he wasn't about to let him squander them.

“He was a bit of a perfectionist,” Mr. DiSantis said of his father. “Whether you were washing the car or getting A's, it had to be perfect.”

The elder Mr. DiSantis worked his way up the hard way, starting as a mechanic and eventually becoming a project manager at a company that converted old U.S. Navy vessels into state-of-the-art warships in the family's hometown of Philadelphia.

He made things a little easier for his son, who at a young age was proving himself worthy of the effort and investment his family put into him. Chris DiSantis became the first student from his high school to get into the Ivy Leagues when he was accepted by Dartmouth.

“The standards were so much higher, I struggled the first year-and-a-half,” Mr. DiSantis said. He turned it around, however, ultimately graduating summa cum laude with a tough double major.

After a stint in investment banking, a 24-year-old Mr. DiSantis went to work for a client who had a group of manufacturing companies headquartered in Pittsburgh.

His first task was to close a factory in Michigan, but after being there a month, he had other plans.

“I said to him, "I think we're about to make a very bad mistake. I don't think we should shut this plant down; it's just had bad management in the past.' ”

Then he went a step further and told his boss, “I think you should make me president and let me turn it around.”

It worked, not only for Mr. DiSantis, but for the workers at the plant who ultimately kept their jobs.

Three years later, Mr. DiSantis called his boss with worse news than usual: Another plant the boss wanted turned around was, in Mr. DiSantis' opinion, not worth saving. Fine, his boss told him — you fire those people, personally.

“He was teaching me a lesson,” Mr. DiSantis said. “The lesson was that once you have to do that, you'll do whatever you have to do to not have to do it again.”

Today, Mr. DiSantis is president and chief operating officer of Hawk Corp., a major maker of brake pads and other friction materials for aircraft and heavy equipment.

He has sold three divisions of the company in nine years as part of a mission to refocus the company on its core business.